eFinancialCareers

Fidelity promotes Perold to head of asset management, moves Wilens to lead 401(k) business [Investment News] Ex-JPMorgan executive John F. Woods becomes CFO at Union Bank, as Matson retires [Union Bank, via BW] Wells Fargo promotes Kimball to head N. Calif. coast commercial banking, moves Sullivan to global financial institutions group [Wells Fargo, via BW] Former Wells Fargo financial advisors Kathy Cataldo and Henry Greenberg join North Pointe Investment Partners [NorthPointe, via BW] Twitter founder... Read more

The financial services industry's ongoing recovery is brewing a fresh set of challenges for HR professionals and recruiters. Job-seekers, conversely, are poised to benefit from a vigorous post-New Year recruiting period. At this time of year, bonus anticipation is high on most everyone's minds. But bonus season is usually followed by a period when employers both cull their own ranks and poach talent from rivals. While culling dominated a year ago,... Read more

Could a career be helped or hindered by an aspect of personal branding that almost no one chooses for themselves – their name? I had this thought after stumbling across an investment firm's announcement that it hired one Amy Doberman as general counsel. I don't mean to sound silly, and I mean no disrespect for Ms. Doberman or her employer. But my knee-jerk response was, a company could do worse than... Read more

While H1N1 has faded from the headlines lately, its significance for financial workplaces is only now ramping up. Get ready for an escalating series of emails from corporate, (hopefully) brief but mandatory employee meetings, and – if you work in client support, trading or other roles that require a continuous presence – cross-training meant to prepare you to fill in for co-workers who get sick. Investment News has a sober story that... Read more

How concerned are Goldman Sachs executives that the bank's image as an emblem of greed might ultimately make them a target of physical violence? Concerned enough that several have obtained gun permits from New York's police department. "Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a... Read more

"Since Obama was elected, we don't have a diversity issue anymore," one HR consultant I know said recently. She was being sarcastic. And, indeed, a number of black professionals continue to face high hurdles as they search for work, even when they have experience with top firms and degrees from top schools. Between January and October 2009 the disparity in joblessness between whites and blacks with college degrees was more severe... Read more

Ex-Delphi CEO Miller joins MidOcean Partners as chairman [MidOcean, via PRN] AXA Equitable promotes Glaize to senior VP of technology services division, will lead expansion into Canada and Mexico [AXA Equitable] XBRL reporting provider Rivet Software hires directors of sales, mutual fund compliance and reporting, and professional services [Rivet Software, via PRN] Telecom tech executive Alan Howe joins B. Riley & Co.’s corporate governance group as a managing director [B. Riley, via BW] Seabury Group... Read more

Career prospects in Islamic finance could be thrown into crisis by the pending default on a $3.5 billion Islamic bond issue by a subsidiary of Dubai World. To comply with interest prohibitions and other provisions of the Quran, Islamic bonds are structured so that lenders and borrowers share risks of loss. Just how risk-sharing will operate in the event of a missed payment by Nakheel, Dubai World's real estate subsidiary,... Read more

We've all seen variations on the list of common questions interviewers ask, but how much have you thought about what questions you should ask a potential employer? The best interviews are really conversations, as well they should be. You want to know if the position is the right fit - just as much as the company does. After all, the work you do makes up a good portion of your waking... Read more

American Express names former Thomson Reuters executive Ed Jay to lead a new global information analysis and consulting business, American Express Business Insights [American Express, via BW] Citigroup taps Willem Buiter, an outspoken LSE professor and former Bank of England policy maker, to the long-vacant post of chief economist [Bloomberg News] Michael Parker joins M.R. Beal as a VP to lead the firm's expansion into international equity trading [M.R. Beal, via BW] Brewer... Read more

The impending default by Dubai World threatens to set back emerging financial markets just as they've moved to the forefront of an incipient global economic recovery. As a result, near-term career prospects for bankers in the Middle East look to suffer a second serious blow in little more than a year. Fallout from the crisis might put a damper on other emerging market careers as well, depending how events unfold. Local... Read more

When it comes to trading, experience matters after all. So say Cambridge University researchers who measured the risk-adjusted performance of 53 high-frequency traders in a study published in the Public Library of Science journal. Reuters reports that the traders' Sharpe ratios increased markedly with the number of years they had been trading - a result suggesting that learning plays a role in increasing returns, the researchers concluded. The study also found... Read more

If you regularly win at online poker, that's a career asset. The widely discussed correlation between poker ability and trading ability has practical value in the job market, because many hiring decision-makers at hedge funds and other trading shops act on their belief. A recent Bloomberg News story names several prominent hedge funds and other firms that consciously recruit successful poker competitors. They include AQR Capital Management, D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma... Read more

The kudzu-like proliferation of hedge funds earlier this decade brought a spike in concerns that the sector's overcrowding all but eliminated alpha-earning opportunities that could justify the funds' high fees. Now that conditions have flipped around, a shrinking fund industry will spur both return opportunities for investors and career opportunities for hedge fund professionals, according to a report released last week. First, a caveat: The report's author, Eric Attias of newly... Read more

Is JPMorgan Chase's chief executive maneuvering to jump to Washington to replace the embattled Timothy Geithner as U.S. Treasury Secretary? Separate stories in Forbes and the New York Post imply as much, yet still leave Jamie Dimon plenty of wiggle room to demur if the Treasury post does come open. Under a succession plan announced plan in September, were Dimon to leave JPMorgan his presumptive replacement would be Jes Staley, who... Read more

If your career path meandered at any point, you won't get far with Aaron Patzer, the Web entrepreneur who built Mint.com and who now heads the personal finance group at Intuit, which acquired his company this month. When hiring, "I look for someone who has made conscious, rational, well-reasoned decisions from high school through college to internships to your first job to now," Patzer told Fortune magazine. "If you've floundered,... Read more

As the world climbs back from the brink, India and China loom larger than ever in the growth plans of top-tier financial institutions. As a result, relocating to Asia is returning to the front burner as a career accelerant for bankers. "JPMorgan’s India branch is increasingly targeting intra-Asia regional business, particularly between India and China," reports the Financial Times. The bank plans to introduce onshore private banking services in India in... Read more

A public library program on researching companies and potential contacts tops our weekly rundown of low-cost and free events of interest to financial professionals. All the following events take place in New York City. *** New York Public Library's Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL) offers free classes to help job-seekers research companies and locate individuals to contact for job leads. Tuesday, Nov. 24, 3:15 p.m. "Job Seekers Contact Research." Science, Industry, and... Read more

Are complaints that Goldman Sachs overpays its employees finally trickling from Main Street up to Wall Street? Yes, says Friday's Wall Street Journal. Some of the firm's largest shareholders have urged Goldman to reduce the size of its bonus pool, the paper reports. "Their complaints in private conversations with the company and at analyst meetings show how anger over its big-money culture is spilling into the ranks of investors who typically... Read more